Associate Professor Tess Lea

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Biographical details

Associate Professor Tess Lea is an anthropologist who specialises in the anthropology of policy. Her fundamental interest is with issues of (dys)function: how it occurs and to what, whom and how it is ascribed. Looking at extraction industries, everyday militarisation, houses, infrastructure (eg plumbing and roads), schools, and efforts to create culturally congruent forms of employment and enterprise from multiple perspectives, her work asks why the path to realising seemingly straightforward ambitions is so densely obstacled. As part of this she is also exploring ways in which Aboriginal families might tell their stories and commandeer policy openings and closings for their own ends. For this pursuit she is working closely with Professor Elizabeth Povinelli from Columbia University and the Karrabing Film Collective (see www.karrabing.com). Lea also has a strong history of applied work, having inaugurated the School for Social and Policy Research at Charles Darwin University; and worked as a policy and ministerial advisor at senior levels of government. She has been awarded a number of Australian Research Council grants; fellowships (e.g. Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship; Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship;, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge Visiting Fellowship); and was the inaugural University Medallist for Women’s Studies at the ANU. Her publications span interests in housing, health and education in regional and remote Australia.

Research interests

Tess’s research interests include human/other animal relations; conceptualisations of the anthropocene; cultures of audit and the anthropology policy; development theory and the will to improve (across housing, education, health, infrastructure and other social policy fields); the tactics of post-colonial power and liberal settler governance; institutional ethnography; urban and regional research.

Teaching and supervision

Tess is available to supervise in subjects matching her interests above, including organisational or policy studies; developmentalism ; the materiality of inequality; the built environment; the workings of contemporary capital; the statisticalisation of everyday life; and human/other animal relations. Any GCS project which involves ethnographic fieldwork will also be of interest.

Current projects

Other current ARC-funded linkage projects focus on the trials and tribulations of the Housing for Health program; Indigenous parental engagement with schools; and implementation of the first randomised control trial of a literacy software program, ABRACADABRA, in collaboration with the Centre for Studies in Learning and Performance, Montreal.

Awards and honours

Editorial Board, OCEANIA and Anthropology in Action

Karrabing Indigenous Corporation, Honorary Member; The Hawke Research Institute, UniSA; Advisory Board Member Centre for Child Development and Education, Menzies School of Health Research; Member, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies; Fellow, Australian Anthropology Society; Member, Australian Cultural Studies Association; Member, European Association of Social Anthropology; Member, American Anthropological Association; Member, American Cultural Anthropology Association; Member, Association for the Anthropology of Policy

Pholeros, P., Lea, T., Rainow, S., Sowerbutts, T., Torzillo, P. (2013). Improving the state of health hardware in Australian Indigenous housing: building more houses is not the only answer. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 72(Supplement 1), 1-6. [More Information]

Lea, T. (2012). When looking for anarchy, look to the state: Fantasies of regulation in forcing disorder within the Australian Indigenous estate. Critique of Anthropology, 32(2), 109-124. [More Information]

Pholeros, P., Lea, T., Rainow, S., Sowerbutts, T., Torzillo, P. (2013). Improving the state of health hardware in Australian Indigenous housing: building more houses is not the only answer. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 72(Supplement 1), 1-6. [More Information]

Lea, T. (2012). When looking for anarchy, look to the state: Fantasies of regulation in forcing disorder within the Australian Indigenous estate. Critique of Anthropology, 32(2), 109-124. [More Information]